Thursday, July 28, 2016

Donald Trump told a female reporter who interrupted him more than once to "be quiet," so he's sexist.

When Trump called out ABC News reporter Tom Llamas and told him "you're a sleaze" at a press conference two months ago, was there a gender component to that?

Of course not. And there's no gender component to telling a woman who interrupts him to "be quiet." Give us a break.

I can promise you one thing: if the sexism angle of this story gets played up, Trump will publicly take on the people crying "sexism" in a very direct, in-your-face, way. He routinely fights back when he is challenged on things like this.

For a long time, I had tried to figure out the reason Donald Trump's popularity, and I think that's it--he's a billionaire street fighter. He's also ridiculous, exasperating, and very entertaining. But he won't allow the progressive news media to bully him. A typical example of that can be seen here,

When the name "Donald Trump" comes up in the conversation, a lot of people feel obliged to display some measure of visceral disgust--they roll their eyes and utter a disparaging remark or two. Young people actually believe what they're expressing, though they are almost universally ill-informed about the facts. Older people may or may not believe it, but they know they can't be a member of "the club" if they fail to react in this manner--they're afraid of what people might think of them if they fail to show disgust for Donald Trump. Sophisticated people don't support Trump, do they?

I find Donald Trump utterly fascinating--his speech patterns, his over-the-top confidence. Unlike a lot of people who have very strong, negative opinions about Trump, I don't get my information from the mainstream news media. I actually watch what he says. Very carefully. We are witnessing something so different, it is historic, and it will be talked about forever.

What's most fascinating about Trump is that virtually every one of his rallies are Nixon's so-called "last press conference" -- except much more in-your-face and much funnier. And therein lies the reason I think a lot of people supported Trump--the GOP nominee is traditionally attacked by the mainstream media. He is put on the defensive, painted as standing in the way of "progress," and hurting the downtrodden. The GOP nominee traditionally has been feckless at fighting back. Think Joe Biden smirking at Paul Ryan throughout the 2012 VP debate. Mr. Ryan was too well-mannered, perhaps too callow, to call him on it. Think Obama rolling his eyes at gentleman Mitt Romney, and CNN's Candy Crowley taking Obama's side on a fact issue during a debate. Does anyone seriously think Trump would lay down for that sort of thing? Think about snarky Lloyd Bentsen telling hapless Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Quayle was humiliated. On and on it goes--not since Reagan in 1980 has a GOP candidate scored a knockout in a Presidential debate. (The exception: Romney bested Obama in the first debate in 2012, only to roll over and "play it safe" after that--Trump doesn't know how to "play it safe.")

Trump's supporters feel they have a candidate who will not be bullied, and they are right. Now, that says nothing about substance. Personally, I have serious misgivings about a lot of what Trump stands for, and a lot of people are legitimately concerned about him (e.g., The National Review devoted an entire issue to stopping him)--but not for the reasons most of the eye-rollers are. Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, yet he doesn't espouse conservative principles. He is not concerned about reducing the size or influence of the Federal government. Due process isn't on his radar. His stance on the issue that is by far the most important to him--trade--is arguably closer to Bernie Sanders' position than that of conservatives and if taken to its logical, Bernie-extreme, could lead to '70s-era inflation (President Obama has warned about that).

If you are a conservative, you are stuck voting for Trump because he has told us who he will appoint to the Supreme Court, and they are conservative jurists: http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/18/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees/ That's not a promise Trump is likely to go back on, at least in his first term. For that same reason, regardless of what you think about Hillary Clinton, if you are not a conservative, you will vote for her.

Friday, July 22, 2016

This is not a defense of Donald Trump. This is not a post to suggest that Donald made a great acceptance speech last night or a poor one. I am not interested in that here.

This is about the double-standard of the people who dominate the public discourse about politics.

After Trump's speech, news outlet after news outlet ripped Trump's speech as "dark" and criticized his vision of America as "fearful."

The people bemoaning Trump's speech include the gender extremists who dominate the public discourse on sexual assault. Take Salon, for instance. It has a headline that reads as follows: "Trump’s terrifying speech: Fear and xenophobia become the GOP’s official platform. The dark, fearful vision laid out by the Republican presidential nominee represents a nadir for our politics."

The irony is that Salon is perhaps the greatest purveyor of rape hysteria in America. Examples: here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And that's just a few I grabbed in a few seconds--we could fill this blog with dark Salon pieces on rape that vilify men, especially college men.

These people own "dark." They invented it. And the "dark" they peddle is a confection of lies and even bigger lies. Donald Trump is a combination of Pollyanna and Mother Teresa compared to these banshees.

The people wringing their hands because Donald Trump is too "dark" unflinchingly demonize college men and reduce them to vile caricature, insist that college campuses are rape pits, claim with a straight face that women don't lie about rape, and preach that due process for men accused of rape on campus is a luxury college women can't afford. They buy into an untruth that even RAINN, the preeminent anti-rape organization in America, denounced: the "rape culture" meme.

They happily fear-monger and spread hysteria for no reason other than to elevate one gender and to diminish another.

They bought into the Duke lacrosse false rape case, Rolling Stone's imaginary gang rape, Mattress Girl's dubious rape, the Hofstra false rape case, and too many others to chronicle. Spend a few months reading through the back stories of this blog and you'll see.

Yet, these same people would have you believe that Donald Trump's vision is "dark."

Why? Because Trump isn't preaching the right kind of "dark." He doesn't blame white college men for all of America's problems.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Sometimes, we need to take sides. Sometimes the choices are easy--the GOP has written a platform that ought to be applauded by people concerned about the rights of the presumptively innocent.

For more than five years, the current administration has manifested an unprecedented hostility to due process when it comes to college students (almost always males) accused of sexual assault. This blog has published literally hundreds of posts on this hostility, and there is no need to summarize it for our readers. People who suggest that the previous administration was "just as bad" are simply wrong, and that position is part of the problem.

The presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, has signaled that she will take this hostility to another level. She believes that the sex act is presumptively rape whenever an accusation is made and that it is up to the accused to prove it wasn't. See here. Anyone who doesn't appreciate the gravity of Mrs. Clinton's positions is unschooled on the issues--she is espousing a position long-advocated by radical feminist extremists.

Too many of the once-heroic champions of due process in the Democratic Party have lately opted to worship at the altar of group identity politics instead, and they happily support the erosion of due process when it comes to one gender, and one crime.

When was the last time a liberal openly cheered rolling back due process protections? They do it now all the time when it comes to college men and sex accusations. The principal exceptions seem to be law professors who appreciate that due process is the greatest bulwark against tyranny and injustice ever devised by man. In the political realm, the protectors of due process are now the libertarians and Constitutional conservatives with libertarian leanings like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. Sen. Rubio expressly supported ending the the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’s "assault against due process rights" when it comes to college men accused of sexual assault.

Now the GOP platform has addressed the issue, and its words are unmistakable. Rape is a crime, and it needs to be proved in court beyond a reasonable doubt, not by misapplying the Title IX preponderance of the evidence standard (and, yes, they misapply the standard--see here).

Sexual assault is a terrible crime. We commend the good-faith efforts by law enforcement, educational institutions, and their partners to address that crime responsibly. Whenever reported, it must be promptly investigated by civil authorities and prosecuted in a courtroom, not a faculty lounge. Questions of guilt or innocence must be decided by a judge and jury, with guilt determined beyond a reasonable doubt. Those convicted of sexual assault should be punished to the full extent of the law. The Administration’s distortion of Title IX to micromanage the way colleges and universities deal with allegations of abuse contravenes our country’s legal traditions and must be halted before it further muddles this complex issue and prevents the proper authorities from investigating and prosecuting sexual assault effectively with due process.

Like it or not, it is the GOP, not the Democratic Party, that seeks to protect our sons from the politically correct witch hunt against them on our college campuses. This is not a position that the law and order GOP of Bob Dole and others of his ilk would have taken 20 years ago--we ought to applaud the GOP for coming to this position. But for many of us who have spent decades of our lives as Democrats, it is a bitter pill to swallow--this is not the party of John F. Kennedy or even Bill Clinton. This is something qualitatively different, and it is out to punish an entire gender by making it far too easy to punish the presumptively innocent for offenses they didn't commit. They have lost me, folks.

Friday, July 15, 2016

The sexual grievance industry--and if you want to see who is part of it, see this letter--constantly defends the illegal mandate of the Dept. of Education's Office for Civil Rights that colleges and universities use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard (but only for sex charges). This standard means that a school must find guilt if the evidence is even 50.001% tilted in favor of the accuser's story.

The goal is very simple: they want to make it easier to expel and suspend more young men for sexual assault because they believe that there is a college rape epidemic even though the belief is ludicrous.

This argument is laughable to anyone who practices civil law, and it is astounding to me that news outlets parrot their argument as if it has legitimacy.

In civil cases, the defendant is afforded all manner of evidentiary protections that colleges routinely deny young men accused of sex offenses. If the Dept. of Education would mandate that colleges adopt the evidentiary protections mandated for defendants in civil trials, I'd be fine with it. But the procedures utilized in college kangaroo sex tribunals cannot be compared to the procedures used civil courts where, generally, only money damages are sought and the preponderance of the evidence standard is employed.

In civil cases, defendants are allowed to be fully represented by counsel at every stage of the proceeding. Their counsel are permitted to make arguments for them and to vigorously depose prior to trial, and to vigorously cross-examine during trial, the accuser and any other pertinent witnesses. In college sex tribunals, counsel for the accused can rarely do more than sit there, if that.

Aside from depositions, defendants in civil litigation are also permitted to engage in all manner of discovery, including proffering requests for admissions, requests for production of documents, and interrogatories. And if the plaintiff fails to respond to proper discovery requests, she is sanctioned by the court, up to and including dismissal of her case and requiring her to pay the other side's attorney's fees.Nothing remotely similar is allowed in most college sex proceedings .

Hearsay evidence generally is excluded, as is evidence whose probative value is outweighed by its prejudicial effect to a party. In college sex proceedings, the adjudicators do not have a clue what constitutes hearsay, much less how to assess whether evidence is too prejudicial to consider.

Trial and appellate judges are lawyers bound by centuries of common law precedent. In college sex proceedings, there are no constraints in the decision-making.

The college kangaroo sex proceeding has no relation to the orderly administration of justice in civil court--none.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

I have come to the conclusion that colleges--both the people who run them and work there, and the people who pay to attend them--don't know, and don't care, what due process is. At least when it comes to sexual assault claims lodged against male students. For those who care, here's the essence of it:

Although due process tolerates variances in procedure "appropriate to the nature of the case," it is nonetheless possible to identify its core goals and requirements. First, "[p]rocedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property." Thus, the required elements of due process are those that "minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations" by enabling persons to contest the basis upon which a State proposes to deprive them of protected interests. The core of these requirements is notice and a hearing before an impartial tribunal. Due process may also require an opportunity for confrontation and cross-examination, and for discovery; that a decision be made based on the record, and that a party be allowed to be represented by counsel.

A student has sued Cornell claiming "the university 'presupposed his guilt' by conducting the investigation without a hearing, and claiming that investigators spoke to him 'in an accusatory and intimidating manner.'"